You make reference on your homepage that this is a “little electronic refuge and monastery”…How is this so?
Usually when one envisions what a monastery is like images of majestic structures come to mind, such as La Grande Chartreuse Carthusian Monastery located in the Chartreuse Mountains of France…
Something big and impressive meant to uplift the senses to heights of spiritual grandeur. Yet more intimately-adequate is the one we offer here at Unborn Mind Zen, wherein one is empowered to encounter the inner-reality like spiritual anchorites through our hefty blog-categories offering insight and study into the vast reservoir of the Buddhadharma. Self-study in such a venue fine-tunes the Mind into unimaginable heights.
You offer videos in the Meditation Room—are these meant to also inspire?
They were carefully chosen to draw-one in to the spirit of the Recollective Resolve. You will notice that on either side of all our pages are dark floorboards that supply a bracket or border for the mind to settle-in to the ambience of the experience—to drift away from the noisy currents of samsara into the Monastery of the Mind that provides the much needed respite from all cumbersome distractions.
I do have to admit that when reading from a blog-series my mind can become enraptured in the message while also dissolving all my cares away in a comforted fashion.
This is good. They provide a canopy beneath which you can partake in the stabilizing message of the Buddhadharma—the last outpost from all illusions.
A stabilizing effect?
Yes—hold onto that, become stabilized in the Unborn where you no longer imagine yourself as an isolated individual. Here you will be empowered to become increasingly more centered and be at peace when you forget the false body identity completely.
What is my identity here in this electronic refuge?
An all-inclusive one minus your skandhic-mind and body. Here, among many others, you are one with Bodhidharma; Huangbo; Hui-neng; Vimalakirti; Bankei; Mañjuśrī; and a whole host of spiritual giants like Chuang-Tzu, John of the Cross, Patañjali, Tozen and Vasubandhu.
Quite a spiritual company!
Indeed, the best of the best. You will never find better company than with spiritual friends such as these—giants amongst the sad malaise of an ever increasingly corrupt civilization. Let us conclude with a video by Tozen that nicely wraps up today’s session.